Saudi Arabia sees highest increase of tourists in GCC

Manama: Saudi Arabia has seen a 31 per cent increase in number of GCC tourists, in the first five months of 2015, according to Rashed Saeed Al Qurese, the head of marketing and promotion at Qatar Tourism Authority, pushing it ahead of other GCC states.

Qatar has witnessed a 10 per cent increase in tourists, with more than 1.3 million people visiting the country so far this year, he added.

In general, there was a 20 per cent increase in number of tourists to GCC states. The GCC comprises of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The increase is attributed mainly to the launch of representative Qatar tourism bureaus in the GCC countries,” Al Qurese said. “There are also the promotional and commercial offers that targeted consumers as well as the programming of several activities and festivals to attract more tourists to Qatar,” he said.

Increases in the number of tourists to the peninsular country were seven per cent from Asia and four per cent from Europe.

“Within Europe, we had an increase of 13 per cent in the number of tourists coming from Austria and 11 per cent from France,” he said.

The tourism authority has representations in both countries.